I´m a person who´s mind runs a million miles per hour. I´m not much of a multitasker but I can think of many odd things all at once. I´ve been told it´s an Aquarius trait. Not that I would know. I don´t pay attention to star signs, zodiac readings or whatever else they´re called. I know my mind runs off while I´m doing stuff. A fact I can live with.

Monday and Wednesday´s are my days off. The girls are at my mom´s enjoying their beloved Grandma-time so that leaves me with nothing to do. Literally. With the house clean, laundry done and lunch cooked I have all the time in the world ( 4 hours to myself feel like an endless amount of time) to do the things I enjoy most.

Call me weird but… I like doing nothing. We live in a fast living world where everyone´s running from A to B all the time. There´s hardly any room during our busy lives to properly relax. Unless we make time. That´s what I do. I make a point out of doing nothing sometimes. Why? It´s important for the mind and body.

In my case, I like to read and drink hot chocolate during my relax time. I like to aimlessly walk around the house in my hot pink bathrobe and just appreciate the silence. I´ll sometimes look out the kitchen window and watch my neighbors chat on the street, I´ll watch others pass by my house with their dogs.. I swear, there´s nothing better than having enough time to appreciate the little things in life.

While sipping my hot cocoa I took an extra few minutes to admire the color of the mug. Speaking of mugs- An Ikea purchase ( because I can never walk out of that place without something from the Dining department). Was the color turquoise? Blue? Teal? Then I thought of how great it would be if a book cover had that same color. The search for the matching book cover began.

It took me a full hour of rummaging to find what I was looking for. Voila!

Book- Dangerous To Know & Love by Jane Harvey-Berrick

Okay, fine. Black, white and gray dominate the cover but there is a color splash of teal.

One of my all time favorite romances. And it´s an older one, too. Not one of those new romances where the Hero is some rich hot-shot who owns half a city and whisks a middle class 20-year-old off her feet with outrageous sex.

No. This is a simple, relatable romance. It´s emotional. I love it. `Dangerous To Know & Love` is one of those stories where you feel the character´s pain and just want to do everything to jump right in and help out. I remember I felt like a peeping Tom while reading Lisanne and Daniel´s story. They had a slow-moving relationship with relatable up´s and down´s. I didn´t really suffer from any emotional trauma after reading this book but I do remember feeling so utterly satisfied and excited.

There aren´t many books I cherish. I have a handful of books I call my romance Bible. This book definitely belongs to those.

Two hot cocoa´s later I realized I was rereading the book. Something I wasn´t planning on doing because I have more than enough books on my oversized TBR list. Books that are anxiously waiting for some attention.

I guess swooning over Daniel and Lisanne´s lovestory was more important. I have time, right? My TBR list isn´t going anywhere. A quick reread and another hot cocoa can never hurt… Especially not me. 🙂

You know what a TBR list is. And if not… be prepared to be enlightened.

TBR, in a nutshell, means To Be Read. TBR is often used when discussing books, bookshelves and / or lists.

When people talk about their TBR lists they´re basically talking about an imaginary and /or a physical list that´s 5 miles long with books that they´d either like to buy, or have already purchased but haven´t found the time to read those books.

Personally, I have a few lists. Some on my phone, some on sticky notes ( which I always manage to lose ), a couple scattered in notebooks and of course, my Amazon wish list. Unlike others… I haven´t bought a book that´s been added to my TBR list. Why? Mainly because I know myself like no other. I´d buy the book and never read it. Because, that´s what usually happens with books that land in a TBR list.

Not that I wouldn´t want to read the books that go on one of my many lists. I just forget about them completely.

When you recommend a book to someone and they say, “I´ll add it to my TBR list.”, you can bet everything you own( house, car, cat, horse) on the fact that that someone already has a 5 mile long list full of untouched books. And the book you recommended will most likely disappear in the sea of book titles for only God knows how long.

Now- an outsider, a person who isn´t madly in love with reading would come up with a simple solution and recommend working off a TBR list before adding more to it. Technically- a brilliant idea. Practically- an impossible mission to accomplish.

In order to sit down and actually read every book on a TBR list a reader would need an enormous amount of discipline. That´s hardly possible when hundreds thousands of books are out there, waiting to be read! There´s a lot of truth behind the words:

“So many books, so little time.” If we were realistic for a moment- we´re not going to live forever. It won´t ever be possible to work off a TBR list because readers always add more books to it. It´s a neverending cycle. It´s evil. It´s unforgiving. Even if we don´t live long enough to read all the books we want to read- our TBR lists will keep on living. ( see how evil a TBR list is?? )

I gave up on my TBR list (s) a long time ago. I saw no point in working them off because of one reason: My brain is like a siev. I can´t help it. I don´t want to want to work the list off because it´s exhausting.

Nowadays, if I see a book that interests me, I´ll buy the paperback and avoid adding to any list in the first place. I still have my lists, though. Somewhere….. And out of pure habit I´still say “Cool, I´ll add it to my blasted TBR list.” See? Evil.

The best possible solution is to avoid making a list in the first place. I know that. Other readers know that. But can we help ourselves? Can we prevent our greedy selves from adding a book to our neverending lists? Of course, NOT. It´s a disease. We can´t be helped.

The struggle is real. Amazon is not a book lover´s friend. 1-clicking is the devil.

Finding the right lighting can be a * cough cough * pain in the ass. I don´t want to read with flood lights, nor do I want to read with dimmed lights ( That´s a real eye-ruiner)

For the last 3 days I´ve been chained to the sofa, suffering from the aftermath of Chinese food. Sad, isn´t it? I love chinese food yet apparently, I can´t stomach it anymore ( or that new place I had dinner at wanted to give me food poisoning ). Despite my suffering I´ve found something positive about not being able to fully function. I CAN READ all day and night! Awesome, right? ( Talk about catching up on the mile long TBR list ) Yeah well, it was awesome until it was dark. That´s when the flood light / dim light / finding the right position came in. Tonight I complained for the first time about not being able to read a book with proper light.

That´s when my husband stood up and ran out of the livingroom. Mind you- my husband hardly moves that fast, especially when he´s already gotten comfy in front of the TV. When he came back he held out a device infront of me with a smile on his face.

It took me a while to realize what he was holding. Then it hit me and I loved him so much I was willing to marry him all over again. A HEADLIGHT!!! He gave me his headlight from work!! Omg…. Like…Oh. My. God! I´m in love!

This beats any table lamp!

See? How f*****g awesome is this?!

I can see what I read! This proves that love still exists even after being married for 15 years!

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